I really like that glass block too - I've always liked glass block.

All that white paint isn't the best tho, IMO. I think I'd like a little more color - and a warmer white.

I love the alcove. The glass block placement reminds me of this K, in the first house I ever bid on, in the early 1990s, It did not pass the "Dad inspection" so I did not buy it.

The glass blocks are nice, especially if your view is of the trash cans. Those cabs look like the originals in my kitchen. It had those vents under the sink, too.

Yes, a little too white.

Here’s some color for ya. This is the 1950s time capsule DS is buying. I do think it’s cute that the PO left the old GE control panel. But that yellow. Yikes.

That is a cute kitchen, bpath. So charming.

I’m a fan of glass block, too, and have always loved vintage kitchens with little shelves around the sink/window.

If it were my kitchen, I’d consider vintage flooring of some sort (depending on what the room is open to). If not doable, I’d buy a vintage style vinyl floorcloth. I love mine in my laundry room … from Hudson & Vine, inspired by Chinacat. :)

Love glass blocks!

Finally, someone has come up with a good use for glass block!

I too love the alcove and glass blocks. I’m also smitten with the curved sides of the uppers that flank the window.

Jilly, thanks for the shoutout! I love these vintage kitchens, especially the curves of the cabinets.

Wow! Bright white!So clean looking though & with a little bit of green it would be great. All that light for the green plants. Is is just me or does the curved frame around the window look like an old vintage refrigerator frame? I just can’t ’see’ what that frame is constructed from - or even its purpose.

KW I think it is just a cove ceiling but the lighting is making look like an actual frame of some kind, but I don't think it's more than a reflection.

So cute! I’m 5’2” so I can picture myself utterly frustrated daily not being able to see out of the window! 🤣 Also….the cabinets are so cute and vintage looking but I can only imagine how much the drawers stick. And I would miss my lower drawers! But definitely darling to look at. 😊

I all my life I have wondered who in the world actually likes glass block. Seems like all 10 of you in the world must be on this thread!

Cute white cabinets. Nice to have light coming in. I'd like to take a hammer to the glass block though.

@olychick You’re right! I see it now , thanks! It’s a classic case of do you see the forrest or the trees!

@Kendrah - too funny about glass block comment! I must be the 11th person who likes them. In the right setting of course!

Sueb I like that vintage kitchen in the house your son is buying, it has a lot of personality. Congrats to the new homeowner!

I'm in the minority here -- I don't like the glass block, and I think the whole thing is too harsh, too much glaring light reflection against the bright white cabinets, it would be hard on the eyes to work in there on a sunny day.

This house in Turtle Bay, Manhattan, the Lescaze house (1933) was the first building to use glass block in New York City.

The brownstone style house on each side (the left has been heavily modified) would typically be pretty dark on the inside except for a relatively short period during the day, or, if the house had very large windows, one is given the choice between getting a lot of light inside, and putting your living area on display, or keeping the windows covered. The glass block is a solution in this case. The insertion of a couple conventional windows lets you see out and get some ventilation (in the pre-AC days)

The new construction in my neighborhood has nearly floor to ceiling glass on the first two levels of the house, (in addition to some smaller windows) and without exception the floor to ceiling windows are kept 100% covered nearly 100% of the time. They may still get a lot of light inside, but you can't see out, at all. I am not quite sure I see the point.

Kitchen is very cute! I not a big glass block fan too often it is used where it does not work with the rest of the house, but I like it here.

I’m with Kendrah on the glass block, never liked it. The kitchen is very charming but I think the old cabinets would be irksome. I’m too used to easy glide open and close.

I all my life I have wondered who in the world actually likes glass block. Seems like all 10 of you in the world must be on this thread!

I think you may be confusing a random sample with the "if you don't have anything nice to say" effect. 🙂

I detest glass block. Honestly, like the frosted glass windows they use when the view is an airshaft, i consider them an obvious compromise instead of a material that has any purpose in its own right. It may be an urban thing; both solutions are popular in cities where you have very close living quarters. It may also be that they feel MCM to me. I am warming up to MCM but it's not my thing.

This kitchen reminds me a bit of my grandmother’s, also built in 1947, but without the glass block and curve. When the new owners remodeled it, they used the same layout, just new cabinets in similar style that actually worked! Glided, closed and stayed closed, opened and stayed open, better insides. Hers had grey-marble-look laminate countertops and yellow and wallpaper, and I think the floor was yellow linoleum. The new owners went with a cute cherry pattern paper and checkered floors, I don’t know if they have changed it since. This paper appears to be a soft, small floral.

This paper appears to be a soft small-floral pattern. The house is small and the kitchen is on the north side, with only the sink liight and an overhead light. so light coming in is essential! And, being small, I’m sure plenty of items get stored on the countertop, to break up the glass block.

I like glass block in certain applications, it seems unusual to find it in this suburban house as I associate it with the need for privacy and light in the city confines. And there must be a way to make it look better on the outside, there is never any trim. Oh yeah, because it’s block.

I have mixed feelings about glass block. Some of my fondest childhood memories take place at a restaurant in upstate NY with 2 boomerang counters and an exterior of curved glass block. They served the best strawberry milk shakes in classic milkshake glass with the stainless steel mixing cup of extra on the side. Ah, bliss!

I love hearing everyone's associations with glass block. It reminds me of 1980's racket ball clubs. My aunt's synagogue used to be in a tiny old Baptist church. When they got bigger they moved into an old racket ball club. An odd place for a synagogue for sure. Plenty of glass block.

For a wall of windows in the city, I'd much rather have semi-sheer curtains. In addition to not liking the aesthetic, I find them super acid trippy and disorienting to look through.

I have lived in lots of old houses with rickety wood drawers. I love them. I'd glad a bar of ivory soap or a candle on the bottom edges of the drawer every once in a while and they'd glide like a skate on ice.

Milkshakes with extra on the side - yes please!

I love glass block but I don't love this kitchen.

I think the glass block over the sink is one of those cases where more wasn't better.

I think it is too white. Needs some warmth.

I don't know how that plastic looking arched frame around the window got shoved into this kitchen.

I think somthing like this would have been more to my taste.

I almost bought a home with the 12" concrete block walls that were covered with texture with a ton of glass block in the walls.

Listing photos don't show a lot of it, but IMO glass block was perfect in this home

@ Sueb - the GE stovetop that originally came with my 1950s house had a control panel like that, but it was removed and covered over with some wood when the stovetop was replaced. Wishing I still had the original - it would've been in this yellow enamel that matched the wall oven - which had to be replaced back in 2010. All the homes built in this subdivision back then were equipped with them - in shades of aqua and pink as well.

That oven was a workhorse that kept perfect temperature, but the serial number was obliterated by time, so it couldn't be repaired when something finally gave out.

Isn't glass block energy efficient as well?

Jennifer, if the house had been built 10 years later, those wood cabinets would probably have gone in. But it is a 1947 kind of post-war tudor revival, I guess, and this was the style. I wonder what the floor was, that it was replaced with that lighter wood-look. Probably linoleum that had deteriorated. There is a door to the right that leads to the side yard or, later, garage, so I ’m sure lots of tracking-in took its toll on the floor.

The curved sides around the window, I wonder if they were recently painted, in the gloss? A relative’s similar kitchen window, minus the curves, from the same era but stained wood, suffered greatly from the heat and moisture from washing dishes. The buyer loved the vintage kitchen (and range), and planned to keep it, but I imagine she at least paintd before replacing the cabinets with something charming that didn’t stick when you yanked it open. In fact, perhaps the cabinets at the top of the thread were stained wood once upon a time, and painted at some point because the finish was gone.

Many of the old wood stained cabinets were painted at some point and time, but I wouldn't have done white counters if I had the painted cabinets. Too much white for a home of this age. Actually, for me - too much white for a kitchen of any age. I need something with some color.

Yeah - it's a bit clinical looking, IMO.

I love this kitchen! My original 1948 kitchen has drawer glides — I assume they’re original. Anyway, they work great so we will be keeping the cabinets.

Glass blocks (that aren’t from the 80s/90s) make me think of Art Deco so these totally work for me!

Glass blocks remind me of basement windows, that's pretty much what they're relegated to around here.

Thought of this thread last night. I drove past a building with my Dad, that been there my whole life. I always thought it was a factory, but now looked like a nice office building. My Dad said it was because I had only ever seen it with glass block, which they just replaced with plate glass. He said the original building had plate glass windows that were shattered in a very random tornado in 1947, and they replaced them with glass block. After 70 some years, what a difference to have it gone.

When I was remodeling a large first floor bathroom, we ended up with a large window (which provided a lot of light) facing the glass enclosed shower. The best solution was glass block, which gave us both privacy and light. The window wasn’t very obvious because it was in the back corner of the bathroom, but it certainly did what we needed at the time.

I would not want to inherit this kitchen for myself. But I can admire its cuteness from afar.

Lars, that’s an adorable kitchen. very 1950s. Look at all the drawers, highly favored these days! I wonder if the light fixture is original?

Our kitchen cabinets I suspect were not always white, probably painted in around 1990-ish, so we simply repainted, a slightly different white when we bought the house 20 years ago. But yes, there are a couple where the paint definitely has been knicked, worn, etc (but not where I hang the towel on the sink cabinet, which so many people seem to fret over). And where the coffee is, there is always a coffee drizzle down the front of the cabinets.

Lars, those are frosted glass sliding doors? My first thought when looking at them is they are clever use of pegboard! I’ve never seen glass like is pictured - just not familiar with it. I agree it’s a very cute kitchen.

I love glass block. I love Art Deco and love the 1980,s. I was in college, fell in love, preppy looked good on me, (so much better then the 1970's. I could eat anything and not gain weight and sleep.

KW, the frosted glass is angled, between the backsplash and the upper cabinets. I have seen that pegboard on the uppers in photos of that style of kitchen. Looks cool, but i can imagine dust getting in, especially the dishes that aren’t used and washed that often. Or just dust settling within the peg holes. My louvered doors collect enough as it is.

Thanks for the explanationn @bpath I looked at picture & see it now. Those angled storage pieces look like some of the older bathroom over sink storage I’ve seen.

I think the kitchen Lars posted is a very nice recreation of the 1955+ GE Wonder Kitchen. That's a modern sink shape and there's a drawer DW adjacent to the sink. It's a little more polished than the original, because of modern technology. The slanted glass unit is probably from an original.

An original.

Pal, is that the over-counter refrigerator there?

Yes, and this one appears to have the drawer freezer underneath, too.

Wow! I have never seen this kind of thing. This current generation has nothing on the post war adults - what are they called? - who created this refrigerator! This is great technology & creativity!

These were GE wall fridges, introduced in 1955 or so and discontinued by 1960 or before.

They are pretty shallow, and the compressor ran a lot because the freezer was up close to the ceiling, as I understand it.

I knew two people who had these and the one family had given up on it long before, and used it like kitchen cabinets, and the other family used the fridge, but had a conventional refrigerator and freezer in the basement.

And neither kitchen had room for a regular refrigerator anywhere else in the kitchen.

Vintage refrigerator fans love them and try to get them to work, (there's a whole group who buy and restore and discuss old fridges) but I think they were just too problematic and specific.

And especially now when appliances don't last you certainly would not want to have a kitchen without a spot for an ordinary refrigerator with many brand options.

@palimpsest - Thanks so very much for the ”history” lesson in kitchen design. I am not quite old enough - or maybe my family wasn’t wealthy enough - for me to have seen these GE wall Fridges in use. I grew up in MT so maybe these elite kitchens were a West or East coast option for those who could afford them?